This is just killing me and drastically limiting the value of the community.
Let's say SOME people want really targeted questions with targeted answers. Let's also say SOME OTHER people want to discuss the question and explore many angles. The latter group will be exploring subjective questions and subjective answers, HAPPILY. We love the user interface AS IS and think there is no better place on the web to do this.
Now, if the question police close all of the questions for the latter group, they are eliminating half of the use cases and VALUE of the community. There is NOTHING lost by having the latter group's questions. There is, however, much lost by eliminating the latter group and pushing them away.
If people want to participate in a question and love the service, why are we pushing them away and closing the question? Why can't people in the first group just move on?
Look at this question about Google Instant. 6000+ views, 44 upvotes (5th overall) and TOTALLY SUBJECTIVE. Plus it had wonderful content that helped everyone involved. It would have been a major loss to the community to eliminate the discussion.
Now look at this question asking nearly an identical question:
UX Review: Google Plus [closed]
In your expert opinions, please comment on Google Plus.
You don't have to answer everything, but these are some sub-questions:
- Is it better than Facebook?
- What do you think of the UI? Drag/Drop into circles?
- Are circles a cool innovation or complex architecture?
- Will it be loved or hated?
- What is your most/least favorite part of it?
To those who don't like these kinds of questions: Just move on. Questions like "Is Google Instant good or bad UX?" got 6k views and a ton of positive comments/knowledge/communication about UX. Some of us LOVE discussion topics like this and find this is the perfect place for it. Don't be annoying, if you don't like it move on.
If you need an invite to Google Plus, just let me know, I have tons of them.
No real difference to my eye. Yet, it was closed and even questions were being deleted by the question police.
It makes no sense to me. The question is about User Experience. The community is about user experience. People would bring valuable answers to the table. Can we make the question police go on vacation?
Jeff Atwood, this problem is not going away. It's making us in the latter group miserable.
Possible solution: Have a way to declare a question "subjective" and have a way to filter out "subjective questions". That way the former group wouldn't see them and the latter group would be happy. We don't want some other interface. We love THIS interface. We just want the questions to be left open.